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What do you think the voting age should be? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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About two years ago now, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park writing my initial thoughts on what I didn't know then but would come to know as Youth Rights.

I don't think I'll ever remember why she did, but about halfway through the day Greta Thunberg came to mind, and I looked up the voting age in Sweden. And my blood boiled in a way I've never experienced in my entire life.

16 years old and one of the most famous and recognizable political activists in the world. 16 years old giving a confident, impassioned, admonishing speech to the fucking UN. 16 years old with no legal right to a voice in her country. No voice to vote for the policies she believed in or the people who might enact them.

My writing, already vitriolic to a fault, managed to become even moreso but with the topic abruptly switched to voting. For the first time in my life, I considered where I'd place the voting age if I could do so unilaterally. Not long into considering it I had a thought that I wrote down immediately, a question I've asked well over 100 times at this point with no substantial answer:

When is it reasonable to say to a person, 'If you're not at least this old, then I don't give a fuck what you think'?

And from the moment I had that thought, I have been unable to place the voting age.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We're definitely not at the point that this brain development science should be affecting policy. Here's an article from 2022 featuring commentary from several neuroscientists. And here are a couple important quotes:

“Some 8-year-old brains exhibited a greater ‘maturation index’ than some 25 year old brains,”

The interpretation of neuroimaging is the most difficult and contentious part; in a 2020 study, 70 different research teams analyzed the same data set and came away with wildly different conclusions.

And here is a different article written entirely by a neuroscientist and released earlier this year.